The Legend of the New Binukot
Alice Tan Gonzales
It was while Elena was dancing the binanog that Lando first saw her.
The loose blouse and the long skirt over which she wore a patadiong did not conceal the lines of her body as she danced to the beating of a tambor and an agong. She spread out her arms and moved her palms from the elbows. The silver coins on her headdress tinkled as she stamped her foot, toes of the other foot beating tattoos on the bamboo floor. Someone from off-stage was trilling, imitating a bird. She tilted her head, jerking her shoulders and smiling coyly at the audience. She was a banog, a hawk-eagle dancing to attract her mate. Her eyes found Lando gaping at her.
Entranced, Lando watched the movements of her body like the shimmering of sunlight on tree leaves. She was obviously a young hawk-eagle yet unmated. For a moment he was a male hawk-eagle gone wild at the scent of her pheromones, his body twitching with desire. He wanted to swoop his way to her and take his mating position atop her but found his wings pinioned by the crowd downstage. He contented himself with watching her nimble figure, his mind systematically pulling away her clothes, leaving her lissome body bare — an undressed fowl. He swore he would, soonest, carry her off and keep her in a cage.
And carry her off he did, at the price of two carabaos and a wedding feast.
She was a well-kept maiden, a binukot, about whom we could read in anthropological and ethnographic publications, written by local researchers. She was invited by the barrio captain of Niyawan to grace the fiesta celebration: She danced the binanog and chanted a portion of a long tale about heroic, legendary men called buyung and beautiful, regal women called dayang. She had come with her parents and a small retinue of hammock-bearers all the way from Tacayan, Calinog, a neighboring barrio four hours’ trek away, nestled in the foothills of Mt. Baloy, the second highest peak of the Madiaas mountain range in Central Panay. But she traveled in style: she was borne on a rattan hammock for she could not travel far on foot, not being used to walking outdoors since childhood.
He gazed at her, the strange object of his passion. In bed she was not a female banog, but a seventeen-year-old girl with flawless skin. Her beauty was the kind sang about in Panayon epics: “her thighs like naked banana stalks, her legs like the fair balanak fish, and the arches of her waist like bows.” Her silken mass of hair spread luxuriant on the white bed sheet, free now of their smell of coconut oil that sickened his stomach a little, and gleaming with advertising appeal from shampooing twice with Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific. The soft mounds of her breasts reverberated with the echoes of the hills in the deepest of Panay’s hinterlands where she was a living jewel. The shadow of a valley between her thighs hinted of the deep, clear waters of Tinagong Dagat into which, once on a business trip, he had wanted to plunge. Now, she was his possession; he had claimed her after a flaunty display of wealth that had her parents capitulating in no time.
Indeed, she came straight out of the Panayon epics, a number of which she could memorize and chant so well: traditional and incongruous, prized and studied by anthropologists and sociologists for her cultural value, but an anachronism in the age of fast cars and computers, of jet planes and tall buildings, of ATMs and mail order brides. She gazed open-mouthed at the wonders of the city as she passed them by on board Lando’s pickup truck — his employer’s vehicle, in truth — from Garangan, where the dirt road passable to motor vehicles began, to the heart of Iloilo City where they were to live after their hungaw, the traditional wedding ceremonial feast of the mountain dwellers, or Panay Bukidnon, that did not require Lando to present personal legal documents.
Elena gazed at him from the bed where she lay that first night in a cheap apartment in Fuentes Street — gazed at his face pockmarked by adolescent pimples gone amuck two decades ago, at his naked squat body still young but with an obscene paunch grown from guzzling bottles of beer evenings with his friends, at the darkness between his thighs and his erect appendage like a male hawk-eagle all aquiver at the sight of its mate. His was the first naked male body she had seen. She curbed the revulsion that threatened to flood her face and she transformed it into a shy smile that said yes, she was all his for the taking. For she was a binukot after all, the most desirable of women by oral tradition, raised to be beautiful and entertaining, and she had been instructed by her father and mother to be submissive and docile, and to please her husband in all ways.
Later she would learn that neither her cultural know-how nor her mother’s last-minute instructions on sexual intimacies had prepared her for the stabbing pain that was to come in that first conjugal encounter. It was her first wound, she who never had gotten as much as a scratch from the sharp stems of baret grass growing on the hillsides of the Madia-as mountain range. But, as he gazed spellbound at the red spot on the white bedsheet, she was glad she had her husband soaring to the heights of prolonged ecstasy. She also found out in the next few days that she did not need to sing her tales of heroic buyung and beautiful dayang nor dance her intricate binanog steps to entertain this stranger who was her husband; she only had to take off her clothes and she would have him falling literally all over her. But, ahay, she had a lot to learn yet in the ways of pleasing him, her husband said after his enthrallment of the first night. And he had started to instruct her on the dynamics of lovemaking from day two with the enthusiasm of a maestro who would be well-paid for his pupil’s learning. Though the lessons often gave her physical discomfort and brought a high color to her cheeks, she meekly agreed to learn, for he was her husband, her master, and her provider in a strange place so far away from her home. But she was a slow learner in this art form, to her husband’s disappointment.
Elena was not so unlike her maternal great-grandmother Lola Lucia who was a binukot in the ancient tradition that goes back to prehistoric Panay. Elena’s father could ill afford a non-working member of the family, who would only bring down upon the family extra expense in maintenance. Work hands were needed in his kaingin all the time, and he needed all the help he could get from his wife and three daughters, for he was always tired, so very tired coming home from his kaingin fields, and all he wanted to do was drink many glassfuls of tuba, a luxury he could hardly afford. But his second daughter was born light-skinned and beautiful, and it was such a waste to subject her to the blistering heat of the sun, the blinding smoke, the scarring brambles and creepers, insect-bites that could break out into sores, all of which made working in the kaingin fields a virtual purgatory. Better to make her stay home and learn the binukot’s songs and dances, her Lola Lucia insisted, needing to know that someone would carry on with her art after she was gone, for she knew enough to tell that she was part of a dying tradition. Not much extra expense needed, she reasoned: Elena could just make use of the old woman’s numerous sinurabi — the loose over-blouse of the Bukidnon women — the many patadiong of the old woman, and even her precious pudong with its four layers of old silver coins that were part her own bride-price some fifty years ago. Lola Lucia, even in her old age, had fetched sums from her performances at fiestas, and at wedding and baptism banquets and in this way helped in household expenses. Elena could do that just as well, maybe even better, for she was young and beautiful with her slightly-slanting, thick-lashed eyes, her small nose that bore no resemblance to her father’s pug nose, her small feet, and trim ankles. The father was soon convinced. After all, he thought to himself, keeping a binukot daughter could be a profitable enterprise, especially if the bride price was right. And so at the age of four, he had his second daughter kept at home, and later, away from school — which kept her happily ignorant — dressed in attractive traditional Bukidnon clothes when she was taken out on occasion, bathed only in the pantaw of their house, and instructed daily by Lola Lucia in the ways of the binukot.
It was therefore with so much pride and anticipation, after waiting so long for the return of his investment, for there had been no worthy suitor so far, that the father received in his home that afternoon of the Niyawan fiesta the man from the city with a pickup truck and so much cash in his pocket. The man bought at measly sums the mountain-dwellers’ fresh rattan wicker strips that he sold at exorbitant prices in the city once he had his furniture-makers fashion these into chairs, tables, beds and other household and office objects much touted for their beauty and indigeneity. Surely such a husband for his daughter would ensure her future marital happiness: lavish food on the table three times a day, servants to do her bidding, and beautiful clothes befitting her binukot status. Her father showed her off to this rich man, turning her face to one side and then to the other to point out to him how unblemished her complexion, and even lifting her long skirt a little to expose a length of skin to show how perfectly unscarred she was. He readily guaranteed his daughter’s virginity when the would-be husband anxiously inquired. The father had raised her bride-price to three carabaos, seeing how well-off the man was, but the man, true businessman that he was, had haggled down to two. It did not matter in the end, for there was a big wedding feast for the whole barrio to enjoy at the expense of the groom, a punsyon that was the talk of the barrio long after the effects of several banga of tuba had worn off, and one that raised the father’s reputation to a new level among his fellows.
Thus it was after this most lavish punsyon in Bukidnon recent history, and during the bragging days of Elena’s father, that a new binukot tradition was born among the Bukidnon folk in the barrio of Tacayan, and spread to the adjoining barrios of Niyawan, Garangan, Bato-bato, Taganhin Buri, Acuña, Siya, and Agcalaga in the hinterlands of Panay. The binukot of the new tradition were isolated, kept from the sun, and given only light chores in the house, but poorly instructed in traditional oral lore, they could hardly chant one long, ancient story of their ancestors without their memory failing. They were valued by family members for the price they would fetch in the bridal market.
Elena was an avid learner of epic chanting and binanog dancing. True to her calling, she could execute the various binanog dance steps with great skill and grace at the age of ten, and at fifteen she had mastered all the epics that her great-grandmother had to teach her. Her diligence paid off because at the age of sixteen, the year her Lola Lucia passed away, Elena took her lola’s place and performed at the town plaza of Tapaz during a fiesta with close to a thousand people in the audience, something her great-grandmother had started to do in the hinter towns at the late age of forty. But at fifty, Lola Lucia had also performed at the West Visayas Cultural Center in the city, a hall so big it could seat a thousand people. This last was an achievement that Elena wanted to emulate, for nothing gave her more pleasure than dancing and singing before a large, appreciative audience. It was an achievement she was to exceed before she was twenty, as fate would have it.
But married now to this stranger who wearied her with his sexual demands, she wondered if she would ever have the chance to perform to such an audience. She had neither sung her long narrative songs nor told her shorter tales before an audience since she left Tacayan, for Lando did not care to listen to them. But she had danced her binanog before him, a variation of it anyway. He would, some nights, ask her to change into the full outfit of a binukot performer, and tell her to dance the binanog as he tapped on the underside of a kettle with a piece of stick. As she executed the intricate steps he would order her to strip her clothes piece by piece, and toss each piece to him where he sat on the floor. Her dancing would invariably terminate in orgiastic lovemaking with him that left her spent, unsatisfied, and increasingly unhappy as the days of the month crept by.
Not that he was unkind to her. He did not ask her to do chores in the apartment knowing that she had not been brought up to do housework: he brought home food everyday bought from a sidewalk karenderya nearby — food which often gave her either diarrhea or constipation — and sent an old woman to wash their clothes and clean the house once a week. Quite considerate, Lando demanded nothing from his new, young wife except that she should be fresh and clean when he came home from work or from his beer sessions with his friends. We would expect a binukot like Elena to be used to such an idle and quiet life, but being home in the mountains, especially with Lola Lucia as a constant companion before the old woman died, and being in the city living the life of a well-kept woman in a rented apartment with her man away most hours of the day were altogether two different living conditions. She would admit to her friends later that once or twice when Lando was not around, the idea of exploring the city alone on foot did cross her mind, in the same way that she was tempted to go out alone to bathe in a nearby stream in Tacayan. But being a true binukot that she was, she dropped the idea as soon as it occurred to her, for adventure and disobedience were just absolute prohibitions for one like her. It was during that month’s stay in the apartment that Elena missed her Lola Lucia the most.
But Elena’s deliverance was not long in coming.
We can only surmise what happened to Lando when he did not return from work one evening a month after their hungaw. He could have packed a few of his belongings that morning when he flew out of Elena’s life forever and gone back to his twenty-one year-old wife and two children safely tucked away in Carcar, Cebu. He could have absconded with a large sum from the sales in the furniture shop that sent his employer in a fit of rage. He could have just simply gotten tired of his binanog-dancing wife and left without a word. Or it could be all of the above. What we could conjecture is that, in all probability, Lando, the virgin-killer, would strike again somewhere under yet another name. But Elena waited until late that night, not so much for him but for the food he would be bringing, for she was hungry, having eaten all the leftovers of the night before that morning at breakfast. She went to bed without supper, of course, but in her simple-minded fashion, did not worry too much about her absent husband, only too glad for one night’s respite from their nocturnal activity that usually lasted well into midnight and resumed in the wee hours of the morning.
She woke up the next morning to find still no husband and no food in the nest. She was wondering what she would do about breakfast when she heard the first sounds of drumbeating. So many drums, she guessed, and coming from not far away, their rhythm so unlike the ones she danced to at home. Her ears pricked in curious attention. She wanted to find out where the sound was coming from, but she was afraid to venture out in the wilderness of the city streets. But the drums persistently called to her. After an hour’s hesitation, she stepped out of the apartment garbed in her Bukidnon clothes.
Her first steps of freedom exhilarated her instantly: no parents, sisters, or husband to detain her. She walked towards the sound of the drums, gawking at people in the streets, and some of them gawked back at her, marveling at her knee-length hair and her outfit. So many people in the streets, all looking so cheerful, some of them with streaks of soot across their faces, and some of them eating food she had never seen before. She wondered if she should ask for a bite in exchange for a dance or a song but decided against it. She walked on getting a little more excited by the minute, glad that she was walking on a paved road free of brambles and brushwood now that she did not have her hammock. She did not walk far though. At the Freedom Grandstand she found the first group of drummers and dancers, but she had to wiggle her way through a thick crowd to see them, earning the curses of irate watchers whose toes she stepped on. A group of young boys beat furiously on their drums, splitting her ears. But the dancers were marvelous: Every group dressed in the same colorful costume and holding a spear and a shield, their bodies covered with soot from head to toe, they executed running steps and made line formations, stomped, hopped, arched and twisted their bodies all in unison. She did not recognize their ati-ati dance — for Aetas in the mountains of Madia-as did not dance like that — but their movements stirred her instinct to dance her own dance. Sitting on her haunches in the frontline of the audience, she watched fascinated, ignoring her hunger pangs, as group after group performed before the cheering multitude of people.
It was past noon when the last of the dancers left the area, but a small crowd that still lingered began dancing to the beating of drums of a maverick group. Despite the hunger drumming in her stomach she gave in to the itching of her feet and the rhythmic jerking of her shoulders. She spread out her arms, flicked her wrists and stamped her feet, though not quite in time with the drumbeats. Hers was a different dance, and other dancers stopped to watch her. Soon there was a small crowd gathered around her and the drummers gave her the beats for her dance. When she leaned to the left, lowered her left arm and kept her right arm raised, traced a circle while tapping her toes on the concrete floor, and uttered a hawk-eagle’s mating trill, someone cried out delightedly that it was a bird dance. The crowd clapped their hands in time with the drumbeat, urging her to dance on, this strange girl with her long, long hair flying loose about her shoulders, her eyes flashing, a coy smile on her lips. And she danced on and on and on, taking wing with the flapping of her arms, until fatigue overtook her unnourished body and she dropped to her knees like a bird shot in the middle of its flight, her face looking so pale that the crowd was startled.
Some muttered that the girl was probably touched in the head. Everyone left except a little group of college girls. They helped her to her feet and gave her water to drink. It was not long before they realized that she was hungry, and they bought her some fish balls to eat which a vendor sold in a cart. A little interview in mixed Kinaray-a and Hiligaynon told them that she came from far away in the mountain and did not know how to go home. This was enough to move the girls to pity, though not enough for anyone of them to take her into their home. But they were smart enough to bring her to the right government agency where she would be looked after.
It was therefore this coincidence — as tales often abound in coincidences — that brought the young binukot girl to the office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and soon afterward, into the home of one of the DSWD workers. Mindful of Elena’s peculiar circumstances, this unmarried lady worker, who lived alone with a servant, volunteered to take the young binukot girl into her custody for a time, only until their office could locate the girl’s home. But Elena’s stay was not for a short time, as it happened, for she did not show interest in leaving. It was in this lady’s home that Elena gained the full use of her feet and hands as she helped in chores around the house and walked to a public elementary school for three years, after which time she was accelerated to high school.
A couple of years after Elena dropped to her knees in front of Freedom Grandstand, she was booked to perform at the CCP’s big theatre. Introduced in the program bill as “a true binukot of the hinterlands of Panay, and possibly the only living binukot,” Elena performed before an audience of teachers, researchers, cultural enthusiasts and students, all numbering eight hundred. Among the audience were cultural and literary notables, all of whom Elena had not heard about, or she would have been cowed into a timid performance.
When she chanted the opening lines:
Odoyyyyyyyyyyyy / Alialion tang sugid
Sumadangon tang surunaon / Tay Buyung Labaw Donggon …
just as most in the audience knew it from the book of Felipe Landa Jocano, there was a thunderous applause. Elena had learned well from her great-grandmother. She provided melodic embellishments to her “odoy” calls, varied her intonation according to the drama that unfolded in the stanzas, and chanted with the flourish of one who enjoyed immensely what she was doing. She chanted in full — with an overhead projector flashing English subtitles on the screen — the sugidanon of one of the great ancestors of the Panay Bukidnons: how he had set out to win the woman he wanted to marry soon after he was born, married two beautiful binukot maidens, and suffered defeat in the hands of the sorcerer Saragnayan, whose wife Labaw Donggon wanted to acquire as his third wife, and rescued only from the pigpen, inside which Saragnayan had imprisoned him, by the valiant rescue of his two new-born sons by his first two wives. Unlike Elena’s husband Lando, Labaw Donggon married only three wives and lived in harmony and contentment with them to the end of his legendary days.
It was a memorable performance, many in the audience who did not fall asleep agreed: Her “odoyyyyy” reverberated in their heads days after they left the theatre. Elena’s performance was documented in the CCP’s records of cultural events in 1988, a video documentary of it found in its archives.
Elena never returned to her home in the barrio at the foothills of Mt. Baloy in Central Panay, for she quickly learned her gender politics from her guardian and the college girls she had befriended. Besides, after that taste of freedom, she thought she had had enough of isolation and detention to last her a lifetime. She started to wear mini-skirts and tight pants and had her knee-length hair cut short and curled Orphan Annie style as a form of protest, and also to save on commercial shampoo. But, today, as some mountain-dwellers of Central Panay raise their own daughters to be a new breed of well-kept maidens, they take inspiration from rumors of how Elena’s rich husband had brought her to Manila, where she now lives in a great mansion that he had built for her, enjoying the extravagant lifestyle of the rich and pampered wife. Unfortunately for them, up to the writing of this tale, none of these new well-kept maidens has yet fetched a bride price of more than a pig and a few chickens.
If one happens to pass at night by the white house with three gables and a green gate in Lawaan Street, Grand Plains Subdivision, and hear a woman’s voice chanting in a strange language, it is only Elena chanting in Ligbok to her guardian. This lady cultural enthusiast, though an amateur in anthropological work, recorded, transcribed, and annotated in all four Panayon epics, all different from the two Panayon epics already recorded and published by two other researchers. These epics she plans to publish later under the general title of Four Sugidanon of Panay, bearing on its cover her name and Elena’s. If one passing by the same house on a Saturday afternoon happens to hear loud laughter and tambor and agong beats, it is only Elena’s friends and neighbors, learning to dance to tape-recorded music the binanog from a former well-kept maiden. They keep to their bird-dancing to keep trim, flying high for many a Saturday, and never think of exchanging it for aerobics. It is just the beginning of a school for Panayon traditional songs and dances that Elena plans to open in the near future as soon as she finishes college.
